Made of Stone
by KukkiaKipu
Summary: Flora has always had a thirst for action, but being the daughter of two rich business executives she knew that was never going to happen. When her parents offer her the opportunity of a life time, will she take it or will her dream stay a dream?
1. Chapter 1

_Hey guys! Long time no see! I'm gonna start my rambling with an explanation about 'Anything For You', 'Before The Dawn' and 'The Princess and the Pauper'. Fact is, I have completely forgotten where I'm going with them. Seriously I must have been sitting in front of each half done chapter thinking 'this is boring as hell where did my creativity go?' so I decided to start a new story._

_If any one has any preferences for what they want to happen in Anything For You especially, let me know_

_Anyway, I have been playing a lot of Resident Evil lately and I love how everyone speaks in awesome one-liners so this is going to be loosely based around one of the games, but I'm not going to bother telling you which one because it is so loosely based it's basically completely different._

…_. K fine, it's Resident Evil Revelations_

_AND because I'm still doing the Evanescence thing, this story is named after the song 'Made of Stone'._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing. I am no one._

**Made of Stone**

"Flora, I don't think that's suitable for a young girl like yourself, how about we go look at the Barbie dolls over there." The young brunette girl huffed and held the plastic machine gun- designed for rough and tough boys, not sweet and dainty girls- tightly to her body.

"But how will I protect myself from the monsters under my bed?" she murmured.

"Imagine if I let you get this, what would you're mother say?"

"Nothing, because she's never at home."

It was Flora Linphea's seventh birthday. Her parents were away on business on opposite ends of the country: they both had high positions in the G.D.F.: the Global Defence Force. She wasn't sure exactly what they did, or what the company even did, she just knew it meant that they were away so much that she had be brought up by people she had no blood relation to.

"Don't you speak ill of your mother, Miss Flora, I report back to her every night." Andrea, the current au pair said.

"I don't believe that." she muttered, "It's _my _birthday and _my _mummy said _I _could have anything _I _wanted. I don't want a stupid doll, I want this M27!"

"How on earth do you even know what it's called? You're barely seven years old!" Andrea sighed and took the gun from the minor. She felt sorry for Flora, coming from a small home with too many people within it's walls she couldn't at all relate; she couldn't imagine waking up in an empty mansion. She sighed, flipped her short, curly red hair and knelt to Flora's level. "How about we get both: the Barbie can be a decoy," she winked. Flora gave her a grin.

"_Now _you're talking."

~. Nine Years Later .~

"MUM. It's MY life, MY decision. I want to join the army!" Sixteen-year-old Flora yelled into the phone.

"Flora, sweetheart, now is not the time. I'll be home in two hours, we can discuss it then. I'll show you so you can understand why joining the army is the worst possible career path, especially for you."

"Like you will! Whenever you come home from God knows where you spend all your time doing paperwork and sleeping. You've never had a say in my life before, and you can't demand one now!" Flora slammed down the receiver and screamed out in frustration.

On the other side, Flora's mother sighed and pressed 'end' on her phone. Flora was right; why did she even bother having a daughter? If she couldn't make her feel loved then what was the point? She dialled her husband's number and waited until he picked up.

"Honey, hi," he said, sounding tired.

"Hey, listen, I just got off the phone with Flora,"

"How is she? Is she alright?" he asked.

"She's fine except… Well, she's sixteen, she's going to start thinking about career choices and universities and…"

"Julie, what's wrong?"

"We really missed everything, didn't we? I barely know who she is. She was telling me that she wanted to join the army. The bloody army! And here I was thinking she was still the timid little flower I remember." she said sadly.

"We can't have her joining the army, that's for sure. Imagine, the daughter of two senior members of the G.D.F. joining the army-,"

"They'd probably demote us." she groaned.

"If she's so eager to fight, then why don't we set her up with a career in the G.D.F.? Just as a trial run, to see if she really does have any potential." he suggested.

"Are you crazy?!" She exclaimed, "We haven't worked in combat for years- have you forgotten how dangerous it is?! The G.D.F. hunts terrorists down in their own territories. We met in a terrorist lab for crying our loud!"

"Precisely! She's our daughter! She must have a thirst for danger. Maybe if we put her in the training program she'll realise that it's scarier than it is exciting."

"… Okay, you may have a point."

"Excellent. I sort it all out and you break it to her. I'll see you tomorrow." he put the phone down.

Once Flora's mother got home it was late, almost midnight, but Flora was sitting at the bottom of the staircase still wearing her school uniform. She stood up when she saw the door open.

"You're late." she stated.

"Sorry, honey, my flight was delayed."

A silence followed.

"So…" Her mother croaked nervously, "Are you still thinking about the army?" Flora didn't say anything but pulled a form out of the pocket of her skirt. "I'll take that as a yes."

"I'm going to do it with or without your support."

"I'm sorry Flora, I can't let you do this."

"Didn't you hear me?"

"Come to my office Flora, there's something we need to talk about."

~.~.~

"A training programme?" Flora questioned, sitting on a rich leather chair opposite her mother (as a passionate vegan, a chair that she had always complained about).

"That's right. It's a prestigious programme designed to train people from the age of 16 intensive research."

"What the hell is 'intensive research'?"

"It's what we call breaking and entering to get information." Flora's mother cracked a smile, remembering the first terrorist she ever shot. At the time, it haunted her but she soon got over it when another twelve were dead by her hand. "Flora, people work hard for years to get into this programme, your father and I have the power to put you in right now."

"Mum… What does the GDF actually do?" Flora asked.

"You'll find out. Just remember that we're the good guys."

_~A/N~_

_Prologuey thing over (was super quick I know), next chapter will probably be sometime next year (joking… I think)_

_Look out for the final few chapters of my other stories- they should be up soon_

_And look out for the next chapter of this one! Who will Flora meet during training? Will thy take kindly to the girl who had the opportunity handed to her on a platter? Probably not- I should know, I'm writing this mofo._

_Let me know what you think! xox _


	2. Chapter 2

Ugh, just watched The Mystery of the Abyss on Netflix- so crap.

There wasn't even a mystery in the Abyss. It was just 'Where's this pearl then? Oh here it is. Cool.'

The other guys weren't in it- literally just Sky.

I'm not a fan of the plots of the other two movies (they were alright), but they were absolutely beautifully animated- this was full of shit, and it looked like shit.

Why did Stella keep trying to crack one-liners that just didn't work? After anything bad happened she'd just be all like 'ugh, when will there be time for shopping?' and there were a bunch others then made you think '… that didn't make sense, did it?'

The voice acting for most of the characters was really bad, they sounded okay but some of the line reading was so off. Bloom was okay though, as was Flora (Flora had next to no lines, but you know she's my fave)

That song at the end was cringe-central. The idea was fun, but the song itself was so bad ('You're the one' would have been way better) the Tritannus-Trix rap (uggggggggh), the badly animated dancing. The only other good thing I can say is that the Winx's hair when they were on stage was super cute, they all looked pretty… Well, when ignoring the super awkward, off-time dancing.

**Made of Stone**

It was getting a bit too close for comfort now.

Flora was sitting in the back seat of a black Bentley with dark windows. The army was a nice idea- definitely the kind of girl Flora wanted to be, but she hadn't actually thought about whether it was the girl she could be. She had spent the last couple of months reading through all of the combat paperwork that her mum had from her days in the GDF, it was completely different to being in the army. It looked twice as dangerous, but twice as cool.

Would she really be able to be successful with this? Or would she leave halfway through in disgrace?

"We're here, Miss Linphea. The driver put the handbrake on and turned around to look at the shivering girl."

"O-oh, cool." she snapped back to reality. He opened the door for her and grabbed her bag. Flora looked at the warehouse they had arrived at- they were in the middle of nowhere.

"This isn't it." the driver said as though he had read her mind, this is where you'll be sleeping with all the other trainees, and the training rooms are downstairs."

"Oh, I see." Flora observed her surroundings, "Why is it so quiet?"

"I was asked to bring you in early so the trainers can talk to you- everyone else has already been through an intensive endurance test and they want to see what level you're at."

"… Intensive? Endurance?... Oh dear god." Flora sighed. Why did she want to do this again?

"So this is the girl!" A man with tanned skin, brown hair with a small beard and black clothes with lots of ornamental chains came out of the warehouse. He walked straight up to Flora and gave her a tight hug- Flora couldn't bring herself to react. "Flora Linphea. Wow." He sighed, "You know, I was trained up by your father- a few years ago now- man, he was a tough one…" the man laughed wistfully. "My name is Anagan, I'm the senior trainer here."

"It's nice to meet you," Flora shook his hand politely.

"Well. Enough chit-chat, it's time to see what you can do."

~.~.~

The warehouse was full of beds. As soon you walked in, beds. They walked a bit further in to be greeted with the showers in the next room. Anagan walked Flora to her bed and she dropped her bag on it.

"What do you think? Luxury, right?" Anagan laughed, "I know it's not what you're used to, but you'll get used to it. Give it a couple of weeks."

"I'm more nervous about sharing a room with everyone else." Flora sighed, "I didn't really realise how hard they must have worked."

"Everything gets better with time." Anagan said, trying to sound encouraging. He had a bad feeling that people were going to go out of their way to make things hard for her, but he didn't want to say.

"So. Where do we train?" she asked.

"Ah! Well, let me take you to the lifts."

The lifts were in a small room in the back corner of the warehouse. They walked into one of the three- it was so shiny and silver, like it had never been used. There were three buttons on the wall.

"Number three is this floor, number two is one floor down- the cafeteria and number one is the training room- it's a long way down." Anagan clicked '1' on the wall and the lift smoothly descended. It took about five minutes to get all the way down- he wasn't kidding about it being a long way.

The doors opened to a huge room with incredibly high ceilings. They had everything you could need to train up a living weapon- climbing walls that reached all the way to the top of the room, rows of running machines, punching bags, and of course, target practice for guns.

"Wow." Flora gushed, looking over everything, "This is intense."

"Isn't it?" Hen smiled and brought her over to a board with twenty names listed, and Flora's was right at the bottom. "Right, this is the progress board. Anyone with their name at the bottom has to climb back up to the warehouse- on that climbing wall."

"Whose rule is that?" Flora narrowed her eyes.

"My rule." Anagan smirked.

"Oh."

"Okay! One hour on the running machine- full speed. Starting off easy." Anagan rubbed his hands together and gestured towards the treadmills. Flora sighed deeply. This is what she wanted; now she had to pay the price.

~.~.~

"Nice shower?" Anagan said from the bed opposite Flora's- she had just appeared from the showers in just a towel.

"Oh. Err… Yeah. Do you mind…?" Flora blushed violently.

"You're going to be changing in front of nineteen other people- I'm the least of your worries." he smirked, "Anyway, uniform." he threw some clothes on to her bed- some black spandex leggings, a red tank top and a spandex jacket with the GDF logo- an embroidery of a globe in gold with the letters 'G.D.F.' inside it. She slipped it on and tied her hair back.

"You're not bad." He stated. Flora snapped her head around.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean in training!" he shot up his hands defensively, "You're on the same level as most of the other applicants. I didn't think you'd be quite up to that point yet."

"My parents have a gym they never use."

"I see." Anagan looked at his watch and stood up. "People should start arriving now- just stay here and… Look cool?" he shrugged. Flora laughed. He opened the door, and like clockwork a car was pulling up.

"Punctuality. I like that." Anagan muttered. A girl with short black hair a porcelain skin stepped out and pulled her bag out of the boot, she was wearing huge headphones. "Girl number two has arrived!" He announced, showing her in. She didn't seem to notice anyone had said anything. "Your bed is next to Flora over there-," He said a little bit louder. She seemed to register the sentence and dropped her suitcase beside Flora's and sat down on the bed, finally removing her headphones.

"Nerves." she smiled, "Music calms me down. I wouldn't have been able to come into the building if I wasn't listening to my music."

"Well that's a huge weakness you're admitting to your head trainer, and another trainee." Anagan raised and eyebrow and gestured to Flora.

"You would have found out sooner or later." she shrugged.

"I'm going to go look out for other arrivals. You two- get to know each other." he left, leaving the two girls alone.

"I'm Musa, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, I'm Flora." Flora smiled sweetly.

"Flora Linphea?" she said, suddenly sounding interested.

"Uh… Yes?"

"I've heard all about you!"

"Who from?"

"My dad's uncle's step son's friend's dad works for the GDF as a secretery, that's how I managed to get through the admission's process. I thought I got it easy, and that's when he told me about you."

"I was told other applicants had to work hard to get here, but I wasn't told how much harder. The majority of the admissions process has been done without me. I only just realised that other people may not take kindly to me." Flora sighed. Musa bit her lip.

"I didn't mean to make you feel like that- I don't even know you! As long as the trainers don't give you any special treatment, you should be fine! Besides, you have me now." she smiled.

"I do?"

"You do." she nodded, "I mean, as long as you've got me."

"… Sure, why the hell not?" Flora laughed. "So do you know anything about the other applicants."

"Well… There's Bloom Domino, she's been groomed for this very program since birth, practically anyway… Erm… Timmy, he specializes in computer hacking, so he might have some trouble with the physical side. Oh, and Layla, I heard that she got full marks on all her endurance tests- she's good. But honestly, I don't think anyone has worked harder than Helia." she rambled.

"Who's Helia?"

"I read on the screenshot of the system that my dad's uncle's step son's friend's dad sent me that he has a background of poverty, and applied for a fully paid scholarship for this system six times."

"Is that even possible to get?"

"It must be- because he finally has it. Some of the stuff he had to do though… I wouldn't be able to do if I was training for ten years."

"Great." Flora huffed, pulling her knees into her chest and resting her head on them, "I have a feeling he might resent me- oh and look!" she pointed to the bed opposite her with the name card 'Helia' resting on it. "It gets better."

"Oh calm down, he'll get over the fact that he's not you." Musa had started to put on the uniform that was sitting on her pillow- identical to Flora's.

"Any one else I should worry about?"

"You don't have to worry about anyone! We're all training to be on the same team here." Musa smiled, "Oh, but you might want to watch out for Darcy."

"Darcy?"

"Nasty piece of work- completed her admissions while in jail for conspiracy to murder. The guy she wanted to murder? The physical education teacher who gave her a B."

"She sounds delightful." Flora winced.

The doors opened again, a tall, thin blonde girl burst in- dressed head to toe in designer gear, she whipped off her sunglasses and looked the room up and down.

"So I guess room service is out of the question."

"Why haven't any guys arrived yet?" Anagan edged behind the blonde and scratched the back of his neck. "Girls- this is Stella of the Solaria family." the Solaria family were very well known- Radius Solaria owned several companies.

"Yes, yes, which one's mine?" Stella snapped impatiently.

"The bed opposite the girl with the black hair there- please put on your uniform and get acquainted with these two, I'll be outside." Anagan left, and Stella daintily put her bag on the bed opposite Musa's. She picked up the uniform in disgust and looked back at Flora and Musa.

"I bloody well hope this hasn't been worn before." she spat.

"They get them new." Musa assured her. "I'm Musa and this is Flora,"

"Nice to meet you dawlings." she fell on to her bed, "So this is exciting, huh?"

"Finally some men!" Anagan burst back in, showing in two well-built guys. Flora didn't really pay any attention to what they looked like until she realised that one of them had set their bag on the bed opposite her, and had sat down.

She looked up at his face- he didn't look like he had finally succeeded in anything, but he did look happy to be there. He was good looking too- a sharp jawline and piercing blue eyes. Hey seemed to notice her staring and gave her a slight smile, making her blush instantly, and turn away. She looked back at Anagan- from where she was sitting it looked like he had narrowed his eyes but that couldn't have been right.

"Hey girls, I'm Sky and this is Helia." the blonde guy said from the closest bed to the showers.

"I'm Stella Solaria, and this is Misa and Florence."

"… Musa and Flora." Flora corrected.

"It's nice to meet you girls." Helia said politely.

"So man, you happy to be hear or what?" Sky ran up to Helia and ruffled his hair.

"It still feels pretty unreal," he laughed, "I feel like it's all over, even though it's just beginning."

"That's a weird way to talk about a room full of beds." Anagan said coldly. Sky stopped what rubbing Helia's head and looked back at the trainer.

"This guy has worked hard to be here- that's some welcoming attitude you've got there." Sky snapped.

"Sky, it's fine, calm down." Helia sighed and started to get into his uniform.

"I going to go outside and see if anyone else- at least I won't have to witness indecency there." Anagan slammed the door behind him. A topless Helia looked around at everyone and raised his eyebrows.

"The hell was that about?"

"He didn't seem so worried about indecency when I was changing." Flora muttered. Everyone turned and looked at her.

"… Well, maybe it's because I'm not a beautiful girl, like yourself." Helia smiled at her.

"Mmm, not even a day has gone by and you already have yourself some admirers Flora," Stella rested her chin in her palms and winked.

"Oh come on," Helia laughed, "I was just stating a fact- Flora's beautiful, you all are, but I know nothing about her… Yet."

"Well what about Anagan?" Stella raised an eyebrow. "He doesn't seem to think that way,"

"No way." Flora said quickly, "He must be, what, thirty years older than me?"

"Well, how did he greet you?"

"With a hug… A tight hug." Flora said quietly.

"There you go! He greeted me with a slap on the back!" Stella exclaimed.

"He pulled off my headphones."

"He slapped me on the ass." Sky said sadly.

"He had better not go easy on you." Stella sighed, "So why did you let him watch you undress?"

"I didn't let him watch me undress!" Flora exclaimed defensively, "He told me not to be embarrassed because I'd be changing in front of nineteen other people any way, so I turned around and assumed he did too."

"_Of course _he didn't turn around. Are you an actual idiot?" Stella said.

"Okay, that's enough torturing poor Flora." Helia fell on to his bed, now in his uniform.

Flora sighed. She couldn't tell whether this was going well or not.

_~A/N~_

_So I'm getting some fairly positive reviews for this story so far, something that came up was that Flora seemed pretty OOC- which is fine but her regular personality show through in later chapters_

_Also the whole fighting and guns thing- srsly guys, if the Winx club didn't have magic powers lord knows they'd be fighting off terrorists with machine guns._

_So tell me what you think!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Made of Stone**

Twenty beds in the warehouse, fourteen of which had been taken by six boys and eight girls. The other six seemed to be more for decoration. Anagan had made his opinion about there being more girls than boys perfectly clear, and Stella had made her opinion on his opinion clear by giving him a hard kick in the balls. Once everyone had arrived, they had an hour to get to know each other. Everyone was friendly, except for two of the girls who stated their names and said nothing else.

The boys:

Timmy: an excellent hacker, could find out anything about any one, but wasn't so good with anything else. He would trip over his own feet in battle, even if he was good with strategy, he would have never been let into the program if it wasn't for his computer skills.

Sky: He had been groomed for battle since a very young age, had great strength and aim but couldn't run to save his life, nowhere near as fast as most of the others.

Brandon: Nicknamed 'sir prance-a-lot' by Anagan (a nick-name only he found hilarious) because he had royal blood in his veins, and could jump the furthest out of everyone in the program. Had great strength and worked best with heavy weapons, could aim a 58kg M2 with one arm, with the precision of a pistol (of course he would normally only do that to show off).

Nabu: His strongest attacks were with his bare hands and legs and was an extremely fast at that, although he wasn't a fan of carrying any weapons and having any kind of fire arm strapped to him slowed him down significantly.

Riven: Strong and sadistic. No one stood a chance against him in the mission simulator, was very good at fighting but took everything a bit too seriously.

Helia: In order to get the fully-paid scholarship he had to pass every section with flying colours, and it wasn't hard to see why they eventually gave it too him. Excelled in everything, even with the harsh treatment from Anagan.

The girls:

Tecna: Another hacker, sometimes she even exceeded Timmy's skills, but unlike him she was fast and logical in battle. She had pretty much absorbed the way everyone fought, which foot they moved with first, their strength, their speed, so winning against her took a while.

Bloom: Like Sky, had been groomed for this, pretty much since birth. She proved herself time and time again to be an excellent leader. Her one weakness was that sometimes she second-guessed herself before she fought, and that was a good window to grab a quick win.

Stella: She was seriously sadistic with a knife, and had ripped several of the training dummies to shreds. She was equally sadistic against anyone who insulted anything about her.

Layla: One of the loveliest girls you could ever meet, but once she got in the ring she didn't care who you were to her, the only thing on her mind was winning. She was super athletic and could climb to super high wall faster than anyone else.

Musa: No one could aim better than she could; she was the best sharp shooter there. In the ring, she had the best reflexes and noticed almost everything. Like Riven, sometimes she took things a little bit too seriously.

Darcy: The most dishonourable fighter there; gave an all-new meaning to the term 'playing dirty', luckily her stamina wasn't that good so wearing her out wasn't difficult.

Stormy: Acquired her nickname because of her extremely short temper and mad hair. She was Darcy's best friend there, and they often worked together, shutting everyone else out.

Flora: The fastest one there, and had the strongest stamina. Though she didn't have the strongest of muscles, she could wear out almost any opponent,

They all got along very well, with the exception of Darcy and Stormy. They all had their moods but had an unspoken agreement not to make things more difficult by taking anything personally. Neither Flora nor Musa had brought up the fact that Flora's powerful parents had just written her in at the last minute, and that's the way Flora wanted to keep it. Helia treated everyone as though they had worked as hard as he had to get into the program, and he was just so nice, she didn't want to create any ripples between whatever kind of friendship it was that they had.

It was six in the evening, meaning the last fight of the day and they all circled around the ring to find out which two it would be this time.

"Right. Next up I want Helia to fight… Miss Flora." Anagan pointed across the room. Helia sighed and pulled himself into the ring.

"Okay Flo, the winner gets the loser's pudding tonight." Helia smiled at her, "And you know how much I like pudding."

"Oh, well it's a shame you won't have any tonight then." she smirked.

(Five minutes later)

"Flora you can take your foot off my face now!"

"Not until you get your arm off my neck!"

"It's a complete stalemate." Timmy said from the side of the ring, stating the obvious.

"Flora has the advantage she's just not using it. She has her damn foot on his face- she could just kick his teeth in." Tecna pondered graphically. Anagan seemed to pick up on it.

"Flora! Quit slacking! TAKE HIM OUT!" He yelled, distracting her.

"What?"

Helia quickly switched things around and pinned her on her back.

"3! 2! 1!" Everyone chanted and cheered, Helia was the winner. He helped Flora up and gave her a firm pat on the back. She smiled back at him slightly.

"FOUL." Anagan exclaimed, "Flora was distracted, she has a technical win."

"The hell are you talking about?" Flora said, "I'm pretty sure I lost."

"Inside the ring is the battle world, nothing counts if it goes in from the outside."

"But, you were to one who…"

"Sorry." he shrugged. Anagan went over to the board and pushed Helia's name below Timmy's, making him the one at the bottom.

"He's been doing this all day." Helia sighed, "He keeps sabotaging me,"

"If we were fighting to kill, I'd be dead right now." Flora scowled, "How can you argue with death?"

"Better work harder, Helia." Anagan smiled grimly at him. "This is the second strike. Another, and maybe you won't be on this program anymore."

It was at that moment that Helia went very quiet.

"The wall, Helia." Anagan said, "Don't worry, I'm sure someone will save dinner for you."

Everyone started to leave, giving Helia small looks of pity.

"Anagan, wait!" Flora stopped him in his tracks, "YOU CAN'T WIN AGAINST DEATH!"

"Flora, what are you talking about?" Anagan rolled his eyes, though his voice softened slightly seeing as it was her.

"He would have killed me if that were a real fight, I'm pretty sure that constitutes winning."

"Flora, can you not just accept that I'm trying to be nice." he said so quietly that only the two of them could hear. He slowly stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, and then firmly patted her on the back before anyone noticed.

"Did you just…" Flora was paralysed by surprise, maybe Stella was right when she said that Anagan had a thing for her. She didn't like it one bit, and she didn't like how he was treating Helia. "I'm going to climb the wall as well. I'll see you later." She said quickly and turned her back on him, then joined Helia who was sitting by the harnessing area for the wall, drinking some water before the climb.

"So be it." Anagan shrugged and got into the other elevator.

"Flora, what are you still doing here?" Helia looked up at her and smiled.

"Joining you: I didn't win, remember?" she sat down next him and nudged him with her shoulders.

"You don't have to do that," he said, but she could tell he was grateful. "I had a feeling he wanted me out, but now I know it." he sighed, "Maybe this wasn't my year. Maybe the same miracle will happen again next year, and there'll be a trainer who doesn't retch at the sight of me."

"I'm getting the feeling that he might be giving me special treatment." Flora sat on the floor and held the back of her neck.

"Why would he be doing that?" he asked, "I mean, I know he thinks you're hot and all but…"

"Shut up!" Flora laughed, "No, it's because I'm…"

"You're what?"

"Oh… Never mind, it doesn't really matter." She smiled back at him.

"Okay, fine, whatever." he shrugged. "I'm just going to sit here and put off climbing that bitch for as long as humanly possible." Flora laughed.

"So… I heard that you tried out six times for the scholarship, if you don't mind me asking, why did you try so hard?" She asked kind of abruptly. She wasn't trying to be rude, she was just curious.

"Oh, that… I…" he laughed a little, "It's kind of a long story."

"Go on." Flora assumed her listening position, making Helia laugh again.

"Well… Okay, fine." He cleared his throat; "I was actually saved by a GDF cadet when I was younger."

"Seriously?" Flora asked, slightly shocked. "How old were you?"

"About eight at the time… There was this bus hijacking and I, along with a girl about the same age had pistols held against our heads, they were using us to keep the rest of the hostages in order. I just remember feeling so helpless and small… there was nothing I could do. "

"You were only young." Flora smiled sympathetically, gently rubbing his back, "Not the strong man you are today, that's for sure."

"Uh, thanks." he smirked.

"Anyway, members of the GDF broke in through the windows and saved everyone, not a soul left behind. I was just a kid and I remember finding them so cool, so when I got home I did all the research on the Global Defence Force and started doing some basic exercises. I found out that if you get in with the GDF, your future is set. That's something that I've never had before; my family isn't exactly rich." he smiled, "I wanted to save lives, just like the people who saved mine."

"And you will."

"Not if Anagan has anything to do with it…" Helia scowled.

Flora just sighed. Why did Anagan hold such a grudge against Helia?

"Just ignore him, and do your best." She put an arm around his neck and gave him a squeeze, "Your best is better than any one else's here."

"Oh please, ten minutes ago you had your foot on my face and almost beat me, and trust me when I say I was determined not to lose."

"And you didn't!" Flora said for what seemed like the hundredth time. He just sighed and looked down, looking like he'd been mentally defeated. Flora couldn't help but let out a small smile, which Helia picked up on.

"What?"

"… You're pretty cute when you're doubting yourself." she said quietly, catching Helia off guard.

"Cute?" He said, looking surprised, "If by cute you mean strong, brave and intimidating then sure, I'm pretty cute." he finished with a laugh, making it clear that he was joking.

"You are pretty hot when you're fighting though…" she said, this time with a small blush on her face.

"Oh? Well, you're pretty hot too…"

It was at that moment that it happened, and neither of them knew how it happened, but it did. Flora found that her lips had collided with his, and they were very gently kissing; a stark contrast to the fight that had only occurred minutes ago. Flora delicately placed her hand behind his head, and realised that he was shaking a little. Was he nervous?

When they broke apart, Flora could barely bring herself to look at him.

She quickly stood up.

"Let's get the climb over with then!"

"Are we not even going to talk about-,"

"Nope."

_~A/N~_

_Sorry for the wait, you know how it is._

_Hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'll try to have the next one along with the ones for my other stories up soon!_

_#review2k14_


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